FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER!

My chorus hasn’t given a performance in two whole years. We are scheduled to sing next month, with only two rehearsals left.  Tonight, we rehearsed for two and a half hours, and we were on the risers for half of it.

This chorus is not like the one we had two years ago. The guy on my left is in his twenties. The woman on my right is in her thirties (I am guessing).  Both of them have sung with our new director in his high-school choirs that he directed for 35 years. He just retired from that job and took over this chorus, getting 100 people to sound like we’ve been singing together for years.

We have not.

There are more women than men, of course, more altos than anyone. The men are good and stong enough to hold their own against three times as many women. We are multi-generational now, lots of ages since many of his former students have joined to sing with him again.

I had a bunch of thoughts to write down, but then my son came into the room and told me how to add Disney Plus to my smart TV, and I lost my train of thought. It’s okay. I’m sort of wound up from the long rehearsal, and my ears are ringing like mad, so I am trying to wind down a bit before crawling into bed, even though it’s almost 11:30.

The dogs will wake me up between 6:00 and 6:30 with daylight coming into the uncurtained living room, where Pepper sleeps. Daisy sneaks into bed with me every night. She waits until I’ve fallen asleep, but she’s not fooling anyone. I feel her climb up into bed and snuggle up against my warmth. We have a symbiotic relationship.

Back to the new director and new chorus:

1. He changed me from tenor to alto, and dang it, if he wasn’t right about that. I’ve been singing a very small range of notes for a decade, not realizing that I could stretch my range if I just worked at it. I can hit more notes than I could in October. I could hit more notes then than I could in September, and so on, and so forth. Maybe by the performance dates, I will be able to sing the highest notes for “what do I care.”
2. The altos are very nice, but I have to say it’s not the same as hanging with the guys. That was fun, and now it’s less fun, but everyone is welcoming, even if I did squeak a bit in the beginning.
3. Ken can’t spell my last name. It’s only four letters, so it shouldn’t be so hard. I’ve emailed him twice about it, he has fixed it twice, yet almost every time I sit in my chair, my name is spelled incorrectly.  In his defense, he did have to learn a bunch of names all at once. But still.
4. He treats us like teenagers, which means he is fun, but I am exhausted after standing, sitting, standing, sitting, choreography, more standing, dancing, and posing for boogie down!

I am sure someone will forward this to him, and that’s fine. It has taken me this long to feel all of my feelings about how much chorus has changed. Nothing stays the same.  How could it? Why would we want it to?

I am sure I’m going to learn a lot from this guy.

I think I already have.